From: Liam Lawless (lawless@ic24.net)
Date: 04/30/00-04:34:12 PM Z
Hi,
Your message made me think, but a general question for anyone who cares to
consider it...
Gum printing, negative intensification with chromium and mercury, and other
procedures involving toxic chemicals have been around for a long time, but
it seems to me that our concern for the environment is a comparatively
recent phenomenon. Has the disposal of photographic wastes on a small scale
ever been known
to cause *problems* in the past, or is our anxiety due to a greater
awareness of pollution in general? How significant are our efforts (or lack
of) against the efforts (or lack of) of industry, motor vehicles, power
stations, etc.?
OK, so OSHA regulations now prohibit the release of dichromates into sewers,
but were the rules framed with the small individual user in mind, and are
they actively policed? Indeed, how much of a threat to public health and
the planet is the average gum printer? An article I once read said that
getting silver out of the ground does infinitely more damage than any end
user of photographic film, but in faraway places that *don't matter*.
My practice has always been to take mercury, lead, cadmium or cyanide
residues or unwanted solid chemicals for safe treatment, but *small*
quantities of liquid waste (not involving any of the above) go down the
drain. This is based on advice in a Kodak publication, "The Disposal of
Photographic Waste", that I read quite a few years ago; even (most of) those
chemicals that are toxic to aquatic organisms can be handled, in small
quantities and if well diluted, by water treatment works. Maybe that is out
of date now, but what quantities constitute a problem? The most dichromate
that I would ever throw away at one time would be 5 g (in a litre of used,
diluted reversal bleach), which I had assumed to be a *small* amount by the
definition of the Kodak booklet. Unfortunately, I no longer have it.
Liam
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